Unrest grows over the sacking of a popular mayor in Bogota – A decades-old tragedy turns out to have been a political assassination – And an outbreak of bubonic plague is causing a panic.

Colombia’s FARC rebels are warning that the dismissal of the democratically elected mayor of Bogota has thrown a spanner in peace talks aimed at end the 50-year-old civil war.  Leftist politician Gustavo Petro led supporters in a second day of protests after an ultra-right wing prosecutor took advantage of a quirk in Colombia’s constitution and fired him because of a problem with garbage collection in the capital last year.  It’s not clear how long Petro's appeal would take or when new elections could be held.

A car crash that killed Brazil's former president Juscelino Kubitschek in 1976 was no accident – it was rigged by the country's military dictatorship, according to a new investigation.  The assassination was part of Operation Condor, the US CIA-sponsored conspiracy between South America’s right-wing dictatorships during the 1970s to murder leftists and opposition politicians.  Kubitschek was neither, but was marked for death anyway because he planned to run for his old office in 1978.

Two Spanish journalists have been kidnapped in Syria by a radical Islamist group linked to al Qaeda.  El Mundo newspaper reporter Javier Espinosa and freelance photographer Ricardo Garcia Vilanova were seized as they tried to leave Syria at the end of a two-week reporting mission when they were taken on 16 September.  The newspaper kept the kidnappings quiet until now, waiting for the terrorists’ demands, but the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” haven’t made any yet.

A Pakistani cleric known as the “father of the Taliban” is backing polio vaccinations for children, a major victory for common sense against those who’ve insisted that the vaccinations are some sort of western plot against Muslims.  Maulana Sami-ul-Haq says anti-Polio measures are not un-Islamic and is urging all parents to get their kids vaccinated.

India’s highest court is due to rule on decriminalizing same-sex relations.  The Delhi high court in 2009 overturned a colonial-era law banning gay sex – but religious groups, particularly Muslim and Christian, challenged that ruling.  Gay rights activists said they were hopeful that the top court would uphold the 2009 judgment, noting that to do otherwise would be flying in the face of the current in international law.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s poll ratings are plunging after ramming through parliament an official secrets act that critics fear could muzzle media and allow officials to hide misdeeds.  About 82 percent of the respondents to a poll taken on Sunday and Monday want the secrets act to be revised or abolished.

Thousands of cops in riot gear stormed the main square in Kiev, Ukraine to clear out protesters, who fought back and vowed not to be moved.  The massive protests sprung up when President Viktor Yanukovych backed away from an enormously popular pact that would have deepened the former Soviet republic's economic ties with the European Union.  The new clashes went down as EU and American officials were in Kiev to try to get Yanukovych to look back to the west.

A village in Madagascar has been hit by a deadly outbreak of the bubonic plague, which has killed at least 20 people in the northwestern town of Mandritsara.  The “black death” is spread by fleas, usually from rats, which are running rampant on the island.  Madagascar has one of the world’s highest Bubonic Plague death rates, claiming 60 lives last year.